A collection of the best of UK mountain, art and environmental articles.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Coming Up: Tales of derring-do in the Lakes.

This Friday The Crow flies back 100 years to the English Lake District and recalls a contemporary epic first ascent.

The period around the closing of the Victorian era and the dawning of the 20th century was something of a golden age in UK Climbing. In the English Lake District, figures like O G Jones, The Abraham Brothers, Haskett-Smith and Siegfried Herford had left the gully epoch behind and had moved out onto the mountain faces, creating routes which are still considered classics to this day. In Wales, figures like Archer Thomson, George Leigh Mallory and Geoffrey Winthrop-Young were equally creative.

However, in the early years of the Edwardian era it was the activists in the north country who held the advantage over their Welsh counterparts, creating routes which technically had the edge. Friday's article describes one such route.

Featured post

To Hatch a Crow

Welcome to footless crow- Croeso i Bran di-droed

Footless Crow aims to provide the best in British outdoor writing in a unique 'blogazine' format. Offering new articles and republishing classic articles from the past which have been cherry picked from UK climbing/outdoor magazines and club journals. In this I am pleased to have received the support of many of the UK's top outdoor writers who see Footless Crow as a perfect medium to air unpublished works and see old works republished in a format which was inconceivable when they were first written!As a non commercial media,the blogazine acknowledges the contribution that publications like Loose Scree and The Angry Corrie have made in the world of mountain literature. Providing accessible quality writing through a low cost 'zine' format. Footless Crow hopes to emulate these publications by also providing content which is unashamedly traditional and celebrates the finest virtues of British mountaineering!

All published works and photographs have been fully approved by the authors who of course retain copyright. The usual rules and restrictions of copyright apply.Hope you enjoy the content which aims to provide a new extended article each week. If you have any comments or would like to contribute something which fits in with the 'Footless' concept then email me at ......

footless_crow@aol.co.uk

* Since late 2011, the site has changed from a structured weekly article based format to a less formal arrangement which will see climbing and occasionally,eco news,art features and reviews appearing alongside articles.

Bookmark and share

Subscribe To

1

2

Why 'Footless Crow' ?

Footless Crow is a seminal rock climb in the Lake District of Northern England. It was the creation of legendary British climber Pete Livesey-1943-1998. Livesey was one of the new breed of climbers who eschewed the traditional laid back, fags and booze, ethic prevalent at the time and instead pursued a rigid training regime designed to increase his physical and mental attributes to the extent that he could push British climbing to new technical standards. In effect he was one of the first UK rock athletes.Footless Crow was a breakthrough climb which at the time was the hardest climb in the Lakes at E5-6c (US 5-13a). Currently E6-6c due to a flake peeling off.First climbed as an aid route by 50's Lakes legend, Paul Ross and then called -The Great Buttress-. Livesey's much rehearsed test piece was finally led on the 19th April,1974 to the wide eyed astonishment of the UK climbing community. One well known climber was said to have hung up his climbing boots after witnessing the ascent !The name Footless Crow was a brilliant piece of imagination from Livesey who claimed that as there was almost nowhere on the route where he could rest he had to hop about like a footless crow.

So now you know.

In 1976 I saw Ron Fawcett, rock-master since the middle Seventies, on the second ascent of Footless Crow in Borrowdale, then the hardest climb in the Lake District – 190 feet of overhanging rock without a resting-place. When his second called up, ‘What’s it like?’ he answered, ‘An ’orrendous place – Ah’m scared out of me wits,’ as he leaned way back on his fingertips, relaxing as comfortably as a sloth under a branch.